by J M Gregson
“How often did he visit the flat?”
“I should think twice, maybe three times a week. I’m allowing for the fact that I didn’t see him every time, you see. But I did see him slinking out in the morning sometimes, looking tired but happy. Lucky young sod. And all the time I was stuck here, dying for someone like you to call.” He moaned softly, then winked. It was a disturbing combination.
Di tried to be brisk and businesslike. “Right. That confirms what we have heard from other sources. Now, try to describe the other people you have seen visiting the
flat, Mr Parker. Take your time, and remember this may be very important.”
He sat back in the chair, savouring the idea of his importance with a satisfied smile. “There were a lot of blokes, when I first spotted them, a year or so ago. But I wasn’t paying much attention, then, it was well before my accident. Here, do you think she was running her own knocking shop down there, this Tamsin?” His face was wracked with the pain of an opportunity missed.
“I really couldn’t say, Mr Parker. Please concentrate on regular visitors you have seen and leave the speculation to us.”
“All right, DC Curtis. Well, as I said, it’s only in the last three months or so that I’ve been watching regularly. That lad who looks like a moonstruck calf in your picture was in and out all the time, as I said. But there were others, I’m sure.” He screwed up his face and shut his eyes in concentration, then managed a swift tap on her left buttock as he said, “I’ve got it!”
You nearly did, thought Di as she moved swiftly out of range. She strove hard for an encouraging smile as she said, “You recall other visitors, Mr Parker?”
“Yes. Two of them. Not as regular as young fellow-me-lad, but more than once. Older than him, they were. More in control of themselves, perhaps. More like me.” He stared at her with a brazen smile, then winked again.
“Descriptions, please. As detailed as possible, but be sure not to add anything which might be merely imagined.” Di tried her most stiff and official mode.
“Oh, I shan’t let my imagination run riot. Except where you’re concerned, m’dear. You’d be surprised what my imagination could dream up for you!”
This time he lunged with both hands, and his wheelchair shot abruptly towards her. But Di, feeling increasingly like an extra from a Carry On film, avoided him with a swift sidestep and thought that she should really have a matador’s cloak for this clumsy bull. “Descriptions, please, Mr Parker!”
He grinned, then produced a drawing from beneath the cushion of his chair. It was obvious he had thought about this before she came, once the uniformed constable had told him that his sightings might be important. Di reached out, took it gingerly from him, and looked at it. She was half-expecting something obscene. She was pleasantly surprised. It was a remarkably detailed pencil drawing of a man of about forty-five, formally dressed in a suit and tie, his domed forehead accentuated by his receding hair. From the scale of the gatepost and iron railings Parker had pencilled in beside him, he seemed to be of average height, running a little towards a middle-aged pot belly. “You draw very well, Mr Parker,” she said, glad of something safe on which to compliment him. “This is almost as good as a photograph.”
Parker smiled, trying to look modest. “Draftsman, aren’t I, when I’m working? Wanted to go to art school, when I was a lad, but my dad wouldn’t let me. Plenty of time to draw now, with me leg in this pot, so I took my time over that. Glad of something to while the time away, I was.” A delicious thought occurred to him. “Here, you wouldn’t like me to draw you, m’dear, would you? I’ve always fancied I could do life drawing, and never had the—”
“No thanks, Mr Parker. I’m far too busy.” She fumbled hastily in her folder and produced her copy of the second photograph the SOCO team had found in the flat across the street. “Would you say this is the man in your drawing?”
Parker set drawing and photograph side by side, one in each of his overactive hands. “I’d say there’s no doubt of it, wouldn’t you?” He tried to draw Di in to look at the pictures with her head beside his, but she had already made up her mind, and experience made her keep to a safe distance.
“I agree. How often did this man visit the flat?”
“With decreasing frequency, I’d say.” He produced the phrase with ponderous certainty, as if he were already giving evidence in court. Again he had obviously thought it up before she came here.
There was no harm in a man giving due thought and consideration to what might be vital evidence, Di decided. “Could you say exactly what you mean by that, please?” she asked, feeling like one performing her part in a formal minuet.
“Well, he was one of the ones visiting before young Romeo came on the scene, I’m pretty sure — I’m talking about nine months to a year ago, long before my accident. Three months ago, he was still visiting — perhaps once a week or a little less. Then I thought he’d stopped altogether, but I’ve seen him going down the steps to the flat twice in the last two or three weeks.”
“When was the last time?” Di had her notebook out now, making a careful record. Already she was imagining the gratitude of the CID hierarchy, could picture herself blushing modestly as she was singled out for recognition by Superintendent John Lambert, this detecting Titan she had never seen.
“He was there a couple of days before the girl died. I think it was Sunday afternoon, but I’m not absolutely certain.”
“And have you any idea at all who this man might be?”
“None at all. I think he might have been getting his end away with her, though. Before your young bloke took over, anyway.”
“Did his visits ever coincide with the young man’s?”
“No. Interesting, that, isn’t it? I reckon you’ve got a fascinating job, as well as a beautiful body. I might even desire you for your brains, m’dear. Eventually. After a few years, like.” He reached for her again, but this time a little half-heartedly, without any real hope of grasping her.
“You said you saw someone else going into the flat in the weeks before she died.”
“Yes, I did. Older chap, again. Older than the one I’ve just given you.”
Di’s interest quickened. A new suspect, perhaps. All of her own, too; no one else had uncovered this one, as far as she knew. “Can you give me a full description please, Mr Parker?”
“I can do better than that, for you, m’dear!” Bert produced a second drawing with a flourish, emboldened by the reception his first one had received.
It was just as detailed, just as skillfully sketched. Di felt that if she met this man in the supermarket, she would recognise him from the drawing. He looked about fifty, perhaps just a few years older than the man in Parker’s first drawing. Unusually, but by no means uniquely in a man of his years, he had long hair, dropping almost to his shoulders; it was a style which seemed to accentuate his deep-set eyes and prominent Roman nose. He was not to Di’s mind handsome, but certainly striking, which was often more useful from the police viewpoint. Strangely in such a depiction, he was carrying a briefcase, which looked in the otherwise informal picture rather like a stage prop. “Why the briefcase?” she asked.
Parker shrugged. “Because he always carried it, when he came there. Whether he visited during the day or the evening, he carried that briefcase. I thought it might help you to pin him down.”
“It might indeed. Did he look like a professional man — say from one of the local offices or banks?”
“I’d doubt it, wouldn’t you, with that hairstyle?”
“True. But he could own his own business.”
“But I think I only saw him once in a suit. You’ll see that I’ve sketched him in a roll- neck shirt and a sweater — that’s how I remember him.”
“Scruffy-looking, is he?”
“No, not at all. Smart casual, I suppose you’d call it. He didn’t wear suits or jackets much, but he always looked clean and tidy. Bit like me, really.” Bert pretended to inspect his immaculate nails, w
hile watching through narrowed eyes for any chance to make a further assault on the CID defences.
While compiling her detailed notes, Di Curtis remained equally aware of her adversary. “How often did this second man visit the flat, Mr Parker?”
“Fairly frequently at first, scarcely at all in the last couple of months. I’d say probably only twice in the last eight weeks. I’ve thought hard and I can’t pinpoint the time exactly for you, but the last time was probably in the week before the girl’s death.”
“Fine. Any other visitors you can remember?”
“No.”
“And have you seen anyone entering that flat since Tamsin Rennie was killed on Wednesday night?”
“No. Well, not apart from your police people. The Scene of Crime team, do you call it? I could have missed someone else, of course, but I haven’t seen anyone go in or come out.”
Di closed her notebook, trying hard not to look satisfied with herself. She couldn’t wait to get back and deliver her findings to DI Rushton at the Murder Room. She moved to the low-silled Georgian window, stooping for a last look down the steps to the basement flat across the street. “You’ve been most helpful, Mr Parker. If you should remember anything — Aaaargh!”
He had goosed her comprehensively at the last, when she had been so careful for so long.
He met her with a smile of seraphic innocence as she whirled in fury. “And you’ve been most helpful, too, DC Curtis. I’ll certainly remember your visit!”
Ten
Lambert had the report of Bert Parker’s observations on his desk when he arrived at eight thirty on Monday morning. At half-past nine, Arthur Rennie, stepfather of the dead girl, was interviewed. This took place by his own request at Oldford Police Station. Perhaps he did not wish to be questioned in the dominating presence of his inexorable wife Sarah.
The first thing Lambert and Hook noted about him was that he carried a briefcase. He came into Lambert’s office and set it down beside his chair, resting it against his calf, like a traveller who fears to be parted from his personal bag.
He was a tall man in a dark brown suit, with the large lapels which were now out of fashion, and a broad silk tie which he tugged nervously as he settled himself to answer their questions. His hair was quite short; to Bert Hook’s practised eye it was obvious that it had recently been cut. The sides and back of Rennie’s neck were unnaturally white for the end of August; Bert decided that they had almost certainly been protected by hair until very recently.
He was nervous, but that was not unusual for anyone who was being questioned in the course of a murder case. This man had some important omissions to explain away, some important questions to answer. Lambert saw no reason to make things easy for him. “It is now four days since Tamsin’s body was discovered in Hereford Cathedral, Mr Rennie. Why did you not get in touch with us earlier?”
He was disconcerted by this head-on attack. He had somehow expected some opening preliminaries, designed to put him at his ease. “Well, I rather expected that you would get in touch with me.” In spite of his apparent discomfort, Rennie’s voice was deep and resonant. An attractive voice — not one to forget in a hurry. “I’d nothing to tell you, you see. Well, nothing to add to what my wife had already told you.”
Wrong already, thought Lambert with grim satisfaction. He would come back to that lie in a little while. He said, “Your wife took an extreme view of her daughter’s conduct. Tamsin had offended her moral code, so she was to be cut off forever. I would go so far as to say that I have never heard such a Draconian and unforgiving view expressed by a mother in twenty years of investigations. Are we to take it that you share your wife’s views on her daughter’s conduct?”
He shifted a little on his seat. “Sarah is very clear-sighted about these things. It can make her seem well, not very compassionate.”
“That is certainly how she presented herself. What I am asking is whether you were equally without compassion, equally inflexible in your banishing of your stepdaughter from any family support.”
Rennie cleared his throat. “I supported my wife. There is surely no shame in that.”
“I am interested in neither shame nor the absence of it, Mr Rennie. Not at this point. I am trying to establish your attitude to and your relationship with a murder victim.”
“Yes. I see that. Well, I supported my wife. We are both Born Again Christians, trying to bring the message of the Lord to the world and to re-establish the Christian values which have been so sadly neglected, even abandoned, in the last half-century or so.”
It was Queen Victoria who complained that Gladstone always addressed her as though she was a public meeting, thought Lambert. That’s how I feel now. For the man had mounted a metaphorical soapbox when he began to mouth his religious views, so that both he and Hook recognised that Rennie was delivering a well-worn formula. Sarah Rennie had said that they were the leaders of their own small sect; Lambert wondered what kind of disciples they recruited with this uncompromising message and attitude. He said drily, “You’re telling me that you agreed that Tamsin should not be offered any help or comfort.”
“That is correct. She could not be supported in her sin. If she had declared a full repentance and supported it by her actions, that might have been different.”
The man is a whited sepulchre, thought Lambert. He knew he had no real evidence to support that view, but he felt it strongly. Rennie enunciated the same austere sentiments as his wife but, although smoothly delivered, they did not carry the same ringing conviction she conveyed. This was a man mouthing dogma as an escape from real thought: perhaps, indeed, as an escape from the truth. Lambert said abruptly, “Were you still in regular contact with Tamsin at the time of her death, Mr Rennie?”
“No. You wouldn’t expect me to be, in view of what I’ve just said.” The denial had come too quickly, right on the heels of the question. The subsequent explanation rang like an apology in the quiet room. Let the arrogant bugger wade in deeper, thought Lambert. Let him spout his humbug until it submerges him. “So you didn’t visit your stepdaughter in the flat in Rosamund Street where she lived?”
“No. I told you, I wasn’t in contact with the girl. She wasn’t my own daughter. She turned up at our house and appealed to my wife for funds to help her with her rent some months ago. Sarah refused, because of the sort of life the girl was living. I supported her in that decision. If Tamsin was refusing to walk in the ways of the Lord, there was no way in which she could be assisted.”
“I see. How was Tamsin breaking the code you thought she should live by, Mr Rennie?”
“She was well, I believe she was living promiscuously. That is what Sarah said, and I believe her.”
“I see. Her landlady tells us that Tamsin went on paying the rent of her basement flat, even after she had lost her modestly paid job in Brown’s Bookshop. You say your wife refused her money. Have you any idea how she went on raising the money for the rent?”
“No. Not really.”
“Not really? What does that mean?”
“Well, Sarah thought she might have been selling her body to make money. As I didn’t see her myself, I couldn’t be certain. But if it’s true, you can see why we couldn’t support the little harlot!” There was real passion dancing in the last phrase, for the first time, and they could hear him breathing heavily in the pause which Lambert allowed to stretch after it. From a position where he had declared his ignorance of the girl’s sexual activities, he seemed suddenly both certain about them and full of righteous anger.
Lambert thought with satisfaction that Rennie was getting in deeper all the time. “We now know for certain that your daughter was using hard drugs, Mr Rennie. By the time of her death, she was in fact dependent upon them. Did you know about this?”
“No. Though I have to say that it does not surprise me.” His deep-set blue eyes widened as he addressed some point above the Superintendent’s head. “Once the devil has tempted you to go astray, he will lead you ever furthe
r from the paths of the Lord, and ever further into the valleys of wickedness.”
“Have you any idea how she financed this habit?”
“I have not. As I say, Sarah thought she might have been selling sexual favours. As I was not in touch with Tamsin myself, I cannot offer any further suggestions.”
“And no doubt you have no idea what her possible sources of supply might have been?”
“As I have told you, I was not in touch with my stepdaughter. I did not know how deeply she had trodden into the lake of evil. How could I have known anything of this?”
He was a dubious modern man trying to speak like an Old Testament prophet. It was obviously a mode he had cultivated in the religious community he dominated. To the gullible people who shared his beliefs and were led by him, it might have been an impressive style, powerfully delivered. Lambert found it both hollow and infuriating. Without taking his eyes from the man’s face, he reached into the top drawer of his desk, took out Bert Parker’s sketch of the man with the briefcase, and pushed it across the desk to Rennie. He said harshly, “Do you recognise the man in that drawing?”
Arthur Rennie held the drawing briefly in his hand, then tossed it back on to the desk. “No. It’s a long-haired man with a briefcase. I don’t see the relevance.” He affected a nonchalance which was betrayed by his suddenly paler face.
Bert Hook, ballpoint pen poised over his notebook, spoke for the first time since the
man had come into Lambert’s office. “Are you denying that that is a picture of you, Mr Rennie?” Hook looked as if he would like to record the lie, to make it official, so that it could be produced against Rennie in some future context.
Rennie must have felt the hostility in the room from these two old hands of interrogation. He picked up the drawing again, pretended to study it more intently, and said carefully, “I suppose it might be me. I did use to have my hair longer. Where did you get this?”
